So, if you want the really short, bare-bones answer, here's what I learned: barefoot movement & conditioning, running, jumping, landing, crawling, rolling, balancing, accuracy, agility, breathing, hanging, climbing, swimming, holding of breath, throwing sticks, throwing rocks, lifting, carrying, using gravity to one's advantage and overall efficiency of movement, some morsels of diet - paleo in specific, sparring, punching, self defense and that I'm a scary, scary woman if threatened. Really if I break most of those down into the subcategories of movement that I haven't named specifically, it's mind-boggling that the seminar was only over 5 days, more like 4 days when two of those were half-days... Really, I'm not quite sure how it all happened because it felt like we only did 2 or 3 things a day (this, said through rose colored glasses, since I can remember spending some days where I was just wishing for it to end).
For more of a detailed description of the experience, read on... and on... and on... (I don't see how it can end up short & concise).
Background
I have to admit that I don't fully follow all the "zoo human" philosophy on the website, or maybe I do, but phrased in a different manner. What I do know is that I feel people in general are dealing with a nature defficiency (myself especially - I go nuts if I don't get enough exposure to rocks & trees & water & stuff), and I feel like our modern western lifestyle is not conducive to health, wellness & mobility over our ever-increasing lifetimes. By talking biomechanics with my chiropractor & others and by reading & researching, I've been becoming fascinated with how our body works and have begun developing a theory, that I'd love to work with some day, that our life-long mobility and ability is determined by the movements we use in our everyday lives. The western world is suffering from some chronic pain issues and mobility issues that are not seen in some other cultures at later stages in life. Keep in mind that I'm not discounting the lack of elasticity in tendons and ligaments that come with age as well as breakdown of cartilage, wear of joints, etc.... BUT a number of mobility problems appear to be preventable either due to avoiding misalignments caused by imbalances caused by lack of use of muscles or by avoiding injury by using proper techniques and keeping critical joints strong and flexible. This is merely a quickie aside...
How it came about
Anyway, so let's start at the beginning of how I impulsively signed up for this thing. Please see the statement above about the mobility mind-set that I'm in at the moment. So for the past two years I've been mildly intrigued by Methode Naturelle and Parkour. Additionally, I've been trying to broaden my exercise regimen to strengthen and expand my abilities (both because I'm all dooms-day-ish and believe that I could get stuck in some catastrophic situation sometime, and because I'd like to still be able to get up off the floor when I'm 80 - "help, I've fallen and I can't get up" should not enter my vocabulary unless to make a joke or in an instance where both legs are broken). In June or July, I try to find something to use my HTO gift-card on and come out of the store with a FREE copy of Blue Ridge Outdoors Magazine and read this article about the Natural Fitness with an "annoyingly fit" man. It's a great article. So I googled MovNat. I watched the YouTube Video. Then I watched it again. And again. And AGAIN. It turned into one of those obsessive things I do such that I was researching or going to the MovNat page everytime I needed an ADHD break at work (i.e. every 10 minutes). Lastly I saw that they were going to be offering seminars in West Virginia in August & September. Then I got more & more distracted. At some point, the irrational part of my brain went AWOL & said "if you don't sign up for this & try it, you'll always be wondering & regret it." This led to an "are there still any available spaces left?" email, with the expectation of the answer "no". I got the answer: "there's one spot left and we've pencilled your name in if you want it." EGADS! What have I gotten myself into. It's one of those weird things that seemed to be 'fate.' We discussed it at home, I paid, it was all set, I was very excited. Then the "you're crazy" part of my brain kicked in & I started fretting about the cost & what a Paleo Diet was (raw meat?) and vacation time and holding the rest of the class back and killing myself and.... If there's one thing I'm an expert at, it's fretting - especially about the various possible ways for me to meet my demise. Well, anyway, that's how I got signed up for it and there was no turning back after hitting the "pay" button. * sigh *
And so it begins...
Tuesday, August 18, sees me departing a little after 7 AM on my drive to West Virginia. After a 5.5 hour car ride in which I stock up on doritos & a rootbeer (I will be eating Paleo for the next five days! augh!), I arrive at the campsite and find a collection of tents and one or two other people there. Tents -> Ozark Trail, first thought -> "egads, I wish I brought my own tent, this sucker's gonna leak". I spend some time talking to my first co-conspirator, James, a "kid" who's in college and is studying Physics - suddenly I don't feel like I'll be totally out of my element. After a bit of chatting, we decide to go see if Jeff, the assistant, needs any help with lunch. This is when I meet co-conspirator #2, Chris, the first of two Canadians and who drove down from Montreal the night before. I'm betting that was longer than 5.5 hours. Part way through chopping red peppers, we were joined by the other Canadian, Greg, an ex-air force instructor, Jason, and the man himself, Erwan Le Corre. In response to me saying "Oh, you're THE man!", he replied: "What were you expecting, a Zeus?" My reaction was not because he was very average looking, but because I had not been able to ascertain via the website, really what he looked like. A little bit later, we were joined by the last participant, a woman named Liz. It was a cozy little group. I had been expecting something different. The listing had said there would be 12 participants and we ended up with only 6. I had been expecting most everyone else to be fitness professionals and we numbered as a physics student, a patent examiner, a freelance journalist, a mediator, a finance guy, and a program manger. Hmm.... we each had a different level of fitness and abilities too, as was determined over the next couple of days. The first meal was a phenomenal salad of greens, peppers, nuts, oils & vinegar and I think some meat & fruit. Our first lesson was conditioning for barefoot movement - i.e. finding the sharpest gravel on the campsite road and purposely standing on it... "It's like a Chinese massage," says Erwan. Hmmm... Then we went to a local park with playgrounds & pavilions to see that MovNat can be practiced anywhere. I'd say we spend about 4 hours learning some basics, like balancing, jumping off picnic tables, walking on all fours, barefoot running and some warm-up moves. Part of it, I suspect, was for evaluating each of our ability levels. I successfully demonstrated that my Klutz Factor is abysmally high as I was 'balancing' across the wooden backstop to a horseshoe pit and managed to simultaneously fall off of AND onto the 'balance beam', leaving a gash in my leg that will be my souvenir! : )
Day three was spent on the Gauley River and it was, by far, the most fantastic day of the seminar. It was the only truly sunny day we had all week for one thing. Thankfully I started the morning by explaining to Erwan that if I look like I'm not paying any attention whatsoever, I really am and don't mind me - I used to drive my teachers nuts with that. Secondly, though a river setting, there was a variety of terrains, from beach to dirty, to boulders to large flatrocks to rocky flat terrain. I was in heaven. It's a landscape that I've kind of grown up with and love dearly. The first lesson of the day was to walk barefoot across rocky terrain without really looking where you're going. Quite hard, really. I'm apparently way too stiff & have to relax my shoulders. We stopped for a swim, swam onto some rocks in the middle of the river, practiced breathing and holding of breath. Then we played cooperative 'games' of toss the rock & toss the stick and toss the stick while running around obstacles and toss the stick while balancing on a log. Next we stopped for lunch on a large flatrock complex and then practiced jumping up ledges and down ledges and across gaping chasms. We found a funky tree to balance on and that was fun, then we found a rather good Bouldering problem and scaled it. I scaled it 4 or 5 times just because. It was my first real, outdoor climbing!!! Yay! We finished with another swim and practice pushing a log across the river while swimming. I dripped dry while doing another climb. It was a great day.
Day three is also the only day I have pictures of essentially.
Day four is when I finally fell apart. I was not having the issues that some other people had - some of the guys were light sleepers and/or not used to being in the woods and hadn't been sleeping much at all. I come from a breed that A) grew up camping and B) have a family history of being able to sleep through train derailments. Sleep was NOT an issue for me. Except that night it rained a goodly bit and 1/3 of my air mattress and bedding got wet. Additionally, they started the day off by saying "OK, now today is going to be pretty intense!" That is the LAST thing I ever want to hear. We went back to the playground/park and warmed up with some out of context stretching and brief bursts of high intensity motion. Then we started learning self-defense and sparring techniques. This is where I discovered that I could cause damage if threatened. We were to practice protecting our heads. With the technique we learned, one could not only parry blows, but also fight back a bit with one's elbows. So we paired up and Chris was put in a position of 'attacking' while I was to defend myself. well, after a a few minutes i had to call a time out because my mind was getting into it and all of a sudden he was not my friend anymore, but a real attacker and I was about to leap & try to rip his head off... I kinda knew I had this in me, I felt it coming on, so I called a time-out. This combined with the 'rage' I exhibited when I was instructed to "hate the target" while Greg was holding it, resulted in me being labelled both 'scary' and 'dangerous' by the guys later. The latter half of the day, as promised, was filled with a smattering of intensity workouts.... series of intense bursts of conditioning, some fast combos and etc. In the midst of all this, it poured buckets on us on and off and when it wasn't raining on us, we were rolling around in soaked, muddy grass. The best part was when we were walking back from the restrooms to the playground. We passed a ginormous puddle on the sidewalk that was 2-3 inches deep. We stopped, we stomped, we kicked water on each other as if none of us were over the age of 15. It was great!!! Then there was another combo set up... theoretically it was nothing to be worried about... balance on a railroad tie for about 30-40 feet, go up a ladder, slide down a slide, run across the playground, duck under a bar, do 5 jump-pull-ups, jump off the steps 3 times and repeat. For some reason, before we started, I started feeling ill. I recognized the feeling from the one and only swim meet that I ever participated in. I hated the pressure & competition. I don't know why I felt that way on the combo, but whatever. The last thing we did was a longer combo... run to a tree, run to the bathrooms, do a small combo from earlier, run to the swings, run back to the bathroom, run to the playground, do the big combo, and then run back to the tree. The end. I started, I did half of it, between the swings & the bathroom I started having trouble breathing... It got worse! A freakin' anxiety/asthma attack! I got soooooo mad! It made it worse. I had to stop, I calmed down by the time I got to the top of the slide. By the bottom of the slide, I was OK, but I ended up being the last one to finish the route. I was sooo mad and pissed. There was no reason for it except a mental breakdown or will. ugh.
Day Five was the final day and it was a half-day only. We lost one of the participants in the morning at breakfast because she had a plane to catch. This is the last picture of us all before we parted:
We took a whitewater style raft across Summersville Lake to an island or peninsula which had a good collection of rocks. On the way, we worked on swimming and swimming under things while holding breath. We worked on accuracy of rock tossing. We also worked on various high-intensity series of lifting & pushups & etc. It was hard, but I knew it wasn't going to last long. The last thing before paddling back was a series of balancing along a wet log, jumping into the water, swimming under it, running back to the other end & repeat. One thing I liked very much about Erwan's instruction was that he got a good sense of each person and knew when to push you... literally. My first circuit, I got onto the log & froze.... Erwan pushed me off into the water. The next time around I went across the wet log with no problem. I don't know if I needed the push as a challenge or to show me that no harm would come by falling off... or maybe both, but I needed to be pushed off. Lastly, we rowed back while Jason & Jeff swam across the lake and finished up with lunch & said goodbye.
The Aftermath...
There were a couple of surprising results after all was said & done. For one thing, by being "Paleo" for a week has given me a particular aversion to "food products" (i.e. processed foods) - this I can only see as being a good thing. I've been doing some research on Coconut oil because, at least at first glance, it appears to potentially be a miracle food. I've also paid more attention to the things I buy.... the fewer ingredients the better.... whole raw nuts, sun dried raisins, no sugar or sulfates or salt added. I'm seeking more fruits & vegetables (again) and less grain products. The grains - breads, & etc - I'm noticing making me feel even more sluggish and uncomfortable than ever before. Actually, right after getting back and going back to a "normal" diet, I got a weird rash on my lower back and both my elbows. A lot of other weird things were going on too, like my leg swelling due to the wound getting infected, but the rash is making me think perchance I should look into Celiacs.... I'm not really sure I'd want to know though. Can you really enjoy a piece of cake with the knowledge that it could kill you?
In addition to diet changes, I was shocked to find that I DIDN'T come away from the experience sore & immobile. Just goes to show you that your body can adapt rather quickly. Also, I found I was able to do a goodly bit more than I had expected. I got kudos points for at least trying stuff even if I couldn't do it. I was known as having a "fighting spirit" by the end and that made me feel good. I also learned a lot about myself - how I work mentally. Competition, big surprise, is my downfall. I am best motivated when I want to do it for myself. I found that I had to fight an urge the first day to "prove myself" to the guys. They never said anything other than encouraging things. There were no disparaging remarks, no talking down, nothing but brotherly encouragement, yet I still felt like I had to prove-down the stereotype of "weak woman" and I found that this was mostly in my head, not theirs. I ended up coming up with a new personal motto, "I can't right now, but I can certainly try"... Huh? Meaning that I know my limits, but that won't stop me from trying until I can, whether it takes me hours, days or months, because I know that I can do most anything if I work on it. I also learned that when threatened or pushed, something else kicks in. I'm by no means going to throw caution to the wind and subject myself to danger, but I got reassurance that if I ever had to protect myself, I could either do a good job of it, or take someone else down with me.
Well, I guess that's all for right now... I think I'm on the verge of having bleeding stumps for fingers from typing so much. I'll write more later if I think of more.
Odd aside for the day: Spellcheck on here doesn't like 'egads'.... Tee-Hee!
